Preaching on Hope
Frederick Buechner

If preachers decide to preach about hope, let them preach out of what they themselves hope for.

They hope that the words of their sermons may bring some measure of understanding and wholeness to the hearts of the people who hear them and to their own hearts. They hope that the public prayers they pray may be heard and answered, and they hope the same for the private prayers of their congregations.

They hope that the somewhat mothÄeaten hymns, the somewhat less than munificent offerings, the somewhat self-conscious exchange of the peace may all be somehow acceptable in the sight of the One in whose name they are offered. They hope that the sacrament of bread and wine may be more than just a perfunctory exercise.

They hope that all those who come to church faithfully week after week may find at least as much to feed their spirits there as they would find staying at home with a good book or getting out into the fresh air for some exercise. At the heart of all their hoping is the hope that God whom all the shouting is about really exists.

And at the heart of the heart is Christ -- the hope that he really is what for years they have been saying he is. That he really conquered sin and death. That in him and through him we also stand a chance of conquering them. "If Christ has not raised from the dead, your faith is futile and you are still in sins," Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians. "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied." If preachers are going to talk about hope, let them talk as honestly as Saint Paul did about hopelessness. Let them acknowledge the darkness and pitiableness of the human condition, including their own condition, into which hope brings still a glimmer of light.

And let them talk with equal honesty about their own reasons for hoping -- not just the official, doctrinal, Biblical reasons but the reasons rooted deep in their own day by day experience. They have hope that God exists because from time to time over the years they believe they have been touched by God. Let them speak of those times with the candor and concretness and passion without which all the homiletical eloquence and technique in the world are worth little.

They believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life because at a few precious moments that is what they have found him to be in their own small deaths and resurrections. Let them speak of those moments not like lecturers or propagandists but like human being speaking their hearts to their dearest friends who at any given point will unerringly know whether they are speaking truth or only parroting it.

The trouble with many sermons is not so much that the preachers are out of touch with what is going on in the world or in books or in theology but that they are out of touch with what is going on their own lives and in the lives of the people they are preaching to.Whether their subject is hope or faith or charity or anything else, let them speak out of the living truth of their own experience of those high matters. Let them have the courage to be themselves.

Frederick Buechner is a Presbyterian Minister and author. His most recent book is Telling Secrets, Harper Collins, 1991.